COVER STORY

COVER STORY; A Literal Addition To Prime-Time Crime

By MARILYN STASIO

Published: July 22, 2001

IT must be true that death never takes a holiday -- not on television, anyway. Here we are in high summer, and newly minted true-crime shows are still turning up in prime time.

''Crime may be on the decrease, statistically, but it always seems to find a television audience,'' said Reid Collins Jr., senior producer for CBS's ''48 Hours,'' which just introduced a new series, ''Murder They Wrote.'' ''Even in a competitive time slot, viewers respond most to our crime stories. People just like to watch them.''

In or out of season, cable stations are swimming in reality-based crime shows. If you can't get enough of ''Cops'' and ''America's Most Wanted'' on Fox, or ''Unsolved Mysteries'' on NBC, you can always turn to ''Investigative Reports,'' ''City Confidential'' and ''American Justice'' on A&E, along with ''History's Mysteries'' on the History Channel. To pick up any slack in programming, the stations are also offering new multi-episode documentaries like ''Legal Action,'' a trip through the San Francisco criminal justice system (Learning Channel, Mondays at 9 p.m.); ''The Hunt,'' a series on modern forensic science (A&E, Thursdays at 10 p.m.); and PBS's ''Secrets of the Dead,'' which advances new theories on historical mysteries like the disappearance of the Jamestown colonists and the origins of the Salem witch hunts (Channel 13, Tuesdays at 8 p.m.).

Meanwhile, it's all-crime-all-the-time on Court TV, which saw its ratings increase 500 percent after retooling in 1999 to flesh out its daytime courtroom coverage with reality-based documentaries, drama series and news shows at night. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the network is dishing up ''Join the Investigation,'' a summerlong extravaganza that promises to put ''armchair cops and detectives'' into ''the thick of investigations and mystery-solving'' with original shows on weekly themes like ''Women to Die For'' (July 23-27). Viewers will even get a chance to help solve for a new series that has its premiere on Aug. 30.

CBS plunged into these criminal-infested waters last Friday with an original angle of its own. ''Murder They Wrote,'' a six-week series that gets ''48 Hours'' started in its new time slot (Friday sat 10 p.m.), takes viewers on criminal investigations based on true-crime books, with their authors as in-house guides. ''We us the authors as the storytelling spine,'' said Mr. Collins, explaining that the writers introduce the stories by reading passages from their books, provide commentary and have the last word. In a final, unscripted segment, he said, ''the authors will talk about what drew them to the crime, what new things they learned about the case, and what continues to haunt, fascinate or puzzle them.''

In a best-of-all-possible-worlds scenario, the ''48 Hours'' journalists may event run up new evidence, leading the authors to rethink -- or even reverse -- their original conclusions. Something like that happens on ''Precious Angels'' (Aug. 10), which recounts the story of Darlie Routier, a Texas woman now on death row for murdering her two children. ''She did it and she deserves to die,'' the author Barbara Davis says early in the show; by the epilogue, she has changed her mind. ''I found out that there was suppressed evidence,'' she says. ''I was in tears. I was literally sick to my stomach. We got it wrong; she didn't do it.''

Not every case provokes such high drama. ''The End of the Dream'' (July 27) is a faithful recounting of Ann Rule's psychological study of Scott Scurlock, a dashing Robin Hood type who lived in a treehouse and recruited his friends into a merry band of bank robbers who knocked over 18 banks and grabbed more than $2 million before coming to a sticky end. ''What I'm always looking for is someone who seemingly has everything: brilliance, good looks, charisma, success, love, money, friends,'' Ms. Rule said. ''But the ones I choose to write about are insatiable. They always want more, no matter who gets hurt. In most cases, it ends in murder.''

The way ''48 Hours'' does it, no crime is ever completely resolved. ''Murder in Spokane'' (Aug. 24), which was based on Mark Fuhrman's account of the hunt for a serial killer who murdered more than 20 prostitutes in three years, doesn't stop when the murderer is caught. It takes up Mr. Fuhrman's charge that inexperienced police officers and sloppy procedures had compromised the investigation and cost at least three women their lives. ''What's going on here?'' he demands. ''We're the richest, freest country in the world and we can't train our detectives to work a homicide case?''

Mr. Fuhrman, a retired Los Angeles Police Department detective whose own work came under fire on the O.J. Simpson murder case, expressed satisfaction with the ''48 Hours'' team for representing the broader views of his book on reforming police procedures through uniform academy training. ''There's good investigative journalism and then there's salacious reporting that just gives you the blood and the gore of the sideshow,'' he said. ''That may be entertaining television, but that's not investigative reporting.''

Such author comments are music to the ears of Mr. Collins, who said he wouldn't have committed his star reporters to ''Murder They Wrote'' if he hadn't thought that the staff and crew of ''48 Hours'' could bring a new level of journalistic integrity to standard true-rime coverage. ''All that reality TV, we did that here first, when it was new and different,'' he said, ''But we got bored with it. This is tedious; this is not journalism. You can catch that stuff now on 48 different cable channels. We have to grow and do things differently if we want to do this on a commercial network.''

Whatever viewers may think, Mr. Collins certainly made a believer of Ms. Rule. ''I was impressed with their sense of values,'' she said. ''One time they wanted me to type something. I said, well, I can just sit down and type any old thing. But they said, no, we may not see it on the screen, but we want you to be typing an actual book. On '48 Hours,' you have to be doing what you say you are doing.''

Photos: On the cover: Evidence found in a getaway van, from ''The End of the Dream,'' this week's segment. (CBS News)(pg. 1); Scott Scurlock (far left), ringleader of a group of bank robbers, in ''The End of the Dream,'' on the July 27 segment of ''Murder They Wrote.'' Betty Wilson (above), accused of killing her husband, in ''By Two and Two'' (Aug. 3). At left, the knife used as evidence in two children's murders (''Precious Angels,'' Aug. 10).(Photographs from CBS News); The corpse of Dr. Jack Wilson, above, in ''By Two and Two,'' next week's installment of ''Murder They Wrote.'' Below, Mark Fuhrman with his recent book, ''Murder in Spokane,'' the basis for the series's Aug. 24 segment. (David Russell/CBS News)(pgs. 4,5)